Woman King
by oftimeandspace
Summary: Love and healing after Miranda.


A/N: Headers from Iron & Wine's "Woman King." _Bao bei_- sweetheart/darling. _Dong ma_?- Understand?

_i. blackbird claw, raven wing_

She doesn't sleep, sometimes, the memories (hers and others, Miranda and death all about) too overwhelming. The first few nights she spends curled up on the bridge, cup of weak coffee going cold on the navigation console.

Once she hears whispers of reality; Zoe dreaming in her bunk as she passes on her way to wash the dregs from the cup. Cool and quiet and then laughter; dirtside with Wash in his too loud shirts. River turns away from that, from the longing and pain of it.

Kaylee dreams of Serenity, new parts humming in perfect unison, Simon's smooth skin under her nails against the engine room's floor. Bright-eyed children, strawberries for dinner. Simon dreams of Kaylee too, and River screaming with needles (she shivers at that), drops of blood, sitting in the swings he and River used to play in, River and Kayleee swinging side by side.

Jayne dreams of his mama's hands, rough with work but tender caring for his scrapes, Vera gleaming in his hands as he polishes her with an old rag, summers back home when he was too afraid of the Black to do more'n dream.

Mal's dreams make River shiver and walk faster past his bunk; crows in the dirt, aftermath of Serenity with no peace at all and Zoe's eyes blank after that first night in the prison camp. Arguing with Inara, summers on Shadow with his mama's eyes haunted by his father's death, and the next morning he catches Kaylee brushing River's hair tenderly, "Fine as a raven's wing, little albatross."

And he smiles, and River knows what it is like, to have everything tangled up so.

_ii. long clothesline, two shirtsleeves_

Chores on Serenity are rotated; once a month everyone switches, regardless of aptitude to each chore. (Zoe burns dinner, Simon always fails to scrub the food properly from the stew pot). This month River pulls laundry duty, and laughs when Simon whispers he can wash his own things, if she'll show him how.

She turns the small lounge of the dining room into drying space and hangs everything out to dry, taking care to snap the wrinkles out of Mal's shirts when she comes to his clothes. (They smell like detergent and summer sunshine and sweet grass, and she knows this and grins at the secrecy of it.) Sometimes she groups them by colors; Kaylee's bright and colorful like gypsy caravans on Earth-That-Was, Zoe's subdued beside them, Jayne's worn with hard wear beside Simon's stiff brocades and silks.

She plays games between the clothes and the drying sheets, dancing through them, feet solid against the cool floor of Serenity.

"Reckon you're the prettiest laundry girl I ever saw." Mal says, smiling from the doorway, thumbs resting on his belt loops. "That's some mighty fine dancing there, too."

"I'm pretending it's summer and we're out in the fields." She says seriously. And then "Lye will burn your hands, if you're not careful. Chemical reactions, and they used to beat the clothes on rocks to remove the dirt."

"Hm." He says in agreement, and helps her fold everything into the basket neatly, smelling of summer and home and River remembers his shirt against her fingertips, without him in it, and wonders at what it'd be if things were different.

_iii. wristwatch time, slowing as she goes to sleep_

"Only sleeping." She says, sleepily, words blurring together; she can feel tension and worry spilling out from him in waves. "Simon wouldn't do that." She continues, reading a particularly nasty image of her brother using the moves he'd seen Jayne use sometimes on more dangerous jobs.

"Hopin' you're right, little one." Mal says, chest constricted with the worry and she sighs and pulls herself up, rubbing sleep from her eyes to blink up at him calmly.

"He tries. He wants me happy. This makes me happy. _Dong ma_?" She watches him carefully, and the tension is still there, but finally he nods and presses a hand to her cheek.

"Don't know what you're messing with, _bao bei_. What you want ain't always like to be the best course."

"Hmm." She says, and grins back at him. "What I want is sleep."

He chuckles at that, and lets her lie back down, pulls the covers up to her chin. "Good night." He says, and she yawns and whispers it back and is asleep before he's out the door.

_iv. black horse fly, lemonade jar on the red ant hill_

They take a job transporting blackmarket produce to Shadow, seven months (three days) after Miranda. Mal's family's been on Shadow long as he can remember, ranchers and farmers the lot of them. His mama didn't understand why he left the ranch when he was seventeen, he tells River, and in her mind she pictures him young and trembling afraid but hiding it behind his set jaw and angry fists.

"Reckon it ain't much." He says, after they unload the payload and give the money to Zoe with promises to return to Serenity by noon. His mother's ranch is well-cared for but modest, well-fed cows neatly branded, newly repaired fences and the farmhouse in the distance grey-brown in the morning sun.

"I think I would have liked her." River says finally, decisively, kicking dust up with the scuffed toe of a combat boot.

"Conjure so." Mal says, eyes on a cow swishing its tail at a black horsefly on its rump. "Imagine she would've taken a shining to you too, if you'd met her at the right time."

He buys her a cup of lemonade in town afterwards, on the way back to Serenity, and she thanks him with a hug and shy kiss to his cheek, and wonders what his mother would have said, if she'd known.


End file.
